Comic Book Stores To Get Doomsday Clock Promotional Badges

You may have seen one or two of these being sported by DC executives at New York Comic Con this past weekend — and now they will be coming to comic stores. The pins will be available in bags of 25 ahead of the release of Doomsday Clock #1 by Geoff Johns, Gary Frank, and Brad Anderson on November 22nd, just in time for those 11:57 p.m. release parties the night before.

One bag will be made available free for participating party comic book retailers, and additional bags can then be ordered for a price by retailers.

And here’s how they look:

It does remind me of the first expressed dissatisfaction expressed by Alan Moore over DC Comics’ handling of Watchmen.Watchmen badges were being sold in comic stores, and Moore and Dave Gibbons didn’t receive any royalties because DC Comics designated them to be “promotional items” — even though stores sold tens of thousands of them and they made a tidy profit. Well, these genuinely are promotional items, though from all accounts, you wouldn’t expect Alan Moore or Dave Gibbons to be particularly happy about these, either.

Doomsday Clock is part of the DC Rebirth line of comics and continues the narrative established with 2016’s one-shot DC Universe: Rebirth Special #1 and 2017’s crossover “The Button”. The miniseries will introduce characters from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s seminal work into the DC Universe, over 12 issues over a year-long period beginning on November 22nd.

The story will include many DC characters, but has particular focus on Superman and Doctor Manhattan. Johns has talked about seeing an interesting dichotomy between Superman, an alien who embodies and is compassionate for humanity and Doctor Manhattan, a human who has detached himself from humanity. This was Moore’s intent, to show how such an alien superhuman would be distinct from humanity rather than the way Superman is usually portrayed. Johns has further explained that Doomsday Clock is the “most personal and most epic, utterly mind-bending project” of his career.